If you were drinking rioja (my very favorite red wine), and you switch over to Yellow Tail Shiraz, I swear to God the shiraz tastes like blood. It tastes just fine if I started with it, but after the rioja? BLOOD.

It was on this day in 1937 – 70 years ago – that J.R.R. Tolkien published The Hobbit, his first novel. Though I was not able to get into the Lord of the Rings trilogy until I was an adult, The Hobbit has been one of my very favorite books for as long as I can remember. I learned to read very early and read everything I could get my hands on, so my parents practically had to start hiding anything with inappropriate subject matter. This included my mother’s medical books, the reading of which convinced me that I was dying of a number of horrible and rare diseases despite all evidence to the contrary.

But Mom had a paperback copy of The Hobbit, and I was allowed to read that one. I don’t have a clue how old I was when I first read it, but I remember exactly where it was kept on the tall bookshelf in our house in Colorado. I read that book literally dozens of times – so many times, in fact, that the front cover and a few of the beginning pages disintegrated years ago.

I was never able to get into The Chronicles of Narnia as a kid, and even when I forced myself to read them as an adult, I could never see what all the fuss was about. And I never got into the stupid cheesy cartoon they released. I knew exactly how everything looked and sounded and smelled based on my time with that crumbling paperback, and it was all I needed. The Hobbit was to me what The Chronicles of Narnia were for many children my age. It nurtured a vivid imagination and love of fantasy that I still have today. It was a book I loved like a security blanket, that I went back to again and again and lost myself in every time. It made a profound impact on the person I am today.

At some point in the last few years, I swiped that old tattered copy of the book from my mom’s bookshelf, and I’ve had it with me ever since. (Sorry, Mom, and no, I’m not giving it back.) Just like I remember where it was on that old tall dark bookshelf in Colorado, I can picture where it is on my bookshelf at home this very minute. I might not go back to it as often as I used to, but I take some comfort in knowing it’s there whenever I need it.

Oh, wow, hey. I guess I should be a little better with this writing thing, huh? Considering how I spend ten of my hard-earned American dollars each month to have this website. Though I spend four times that on my gym membership and, um…I think I might have gone in August. I definitely went a few times in July. I also have this mad-expensive digital cable plan and, seriously, besides the basic FOX, NBC, ABC, & CBS, the only channels I watch at all are in the ESPN family, or the Adult Alternative digital music channel. And even those aren’t regular occurrences. And I’m not watching ESPN all that much this fall because most Northwestern games are on the new Big 10 Network which Comcast won’t carry, so blah. What else do I spend money on that is currently a waste? Netflix. Maybe my home phone. I guess that’s it as far as regular expenses. I have other stuff I pay for that is certainly not necessary, but I feel like I use that stuff enough to justify the cost (hi, Internet and TiVo) so there’s that.

I honestly don’t know if I’ve mentioned this here or not, but one of the big reasons I’m not writing much is because I’m the project manager on a huge, huge thing at work that is seriously eating me alive. I feel pretty safe in saying that this is the most stress I’ve ever been under in my life, and it’s been getting worse and worse since April or so. In college when I almost didn’t graduate on time I was under a lot of stress, but that was all about managing my own time and resources. Now, it’s 20 other people and 150,000 records and multiple departments in addition to my other responsibilities, which filled up a day quite well on their own. I work late a lot and my healthy routines (sleeping, eating, working out, keeping a good budget) have completely gone down the toilet. I sleep weird hours and I dream about work. I eat Chinese food, cereal, and Diet Coke. I am a perfectionist and I feel like my entire career hinges on whether or not I bring this project to a successful and timely conclusion in November.

This is boring.

Want to hear about how I hurt my foot at work because of all the things I listed above? Sure you do. You know I try not to write about my job here, and specifically, my coworkers and office politics and stuff. So…hmm. How to handle this? Okay, let’s just say that someone asked me to do something that was fairly ridiculous and would have caused several people to question my sanity. And I refused. And then that same someone sent me an email suggesting that I send another email to someone else clarifying something I said in an earlier email, and that if someone else didn’t respond to my email about the email then I should call that person and explain what I said in the email about the email. And so on. Many of my days are like this lately.

So I went into a coworker’s office to vent, and as I was venting I stomped my feet a bit, which I have learned in the last two weeks is evidently something I do quite regularly without realizing it. But I was feeling fine about stomping, and I could have stomped for another few hours, except that in the midst of the stomping I felt a shooting pain behind my left inner ankle. So I figured that stopping stomping would probably be a good idea. And it didn’t hurt much then, but it got progressively worse over the next few days until I was limping and had to ice it and wear a brace. It’s still not quite better because I’m a dumbass and wore 3-inch heels to my high school reunion and strained it a bit more. At work we call this Temper Tantrum Foot. It’s an epidemic.

Oh, yeah, I had my ten-year high school reunion on Saturday. Now that it’s over, I feel comfortable saying that I temporarily lost my damn mind due to stressing about looking and acting just right at the thing. I went on a weird spree of ordering things online and having them overnighted, only to have them not fit right, so I’d go shopping and return stuff and in the end I wore a shirt I’ve had for two years over a camisole I’ve had longer. I did wear hot red shoes though. The reunion was fine. I saw some people I was really happy to reconnect with, and some people I didn’t give a crap about, and some people I seriously forgot I graduated with, and everyone was very friendly and it was fine. Not that big a deal. We left early because my best friend there is 8 months pregnant and tires quickly, and DJ NasteeNice (I wish I made that up) was spinning 1997 jams at top volume, making it impossible to catch up with friends anymore. This is how you know I’m old. I’m like, dude. I can download “Return of the Mack” and “This is How We Do It” on iTunes if I miss them that much. I don’t know if I’ll ever see these people again.

Umm…I went to Chicago and it kind of sucked for reasons I don’t want to go into here. I went to Atlanta and it really sucked, basically because getting there was a bitch and I got stranded in Charlotte for the night. I did write a strongly-worded letter and get a $250 flight voucher out of it, though, so that helped make me feel better. I stayed home sick with a cold today. Yesterday on my way home from work I witnessed a pretty messy car accident and sat with one of the drivers and talked to her until the police and rescue crews came to tend to her. She was elderly and really rattled and I still feel bad that I couldn’t get her calm enough to give me a number I could call for her family. I hope she is okay and didn’t have to stay by herself long. I didn’t realize how shaken up the accident made me until, while on the phone at the grocery store, I lost track and put three boxes of the same kind of cereal in my cart. The accident sounded awful, but I’ve heard crashes before. What bothered me most was the smell. The smell was really bad. If I’d left work through the main gate instead of the back I might have been the other driver in that accident.

So…yeah. That’s some of what’s been going on. You all deserve better than this but I should be in bed. I’ll try harder.

At Family HQ, my parents have one of those phone systems with multiple handsets. You can assign each one a name in order to keep the handsets straight. Like, you could name one “Kitchen” and one “Family Room.”

Or, if you’re my family, you could name one “Poop Phone” and the other one “JimIsKing.”